 A regular column on the most American of activities.
By Paula Marantz Cohen |
A Temporary Uplift Want to end patriarchal oppression? Don't burn your bra — just get one that fits.
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Boob Tube A 50-inch plasma TV feels gauche, but that's the shuffling progress of civilization for you.
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Refueling Think things are slow on the NJ Turnpike? Try eating at its rest stops.
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Have Tour, Will Travel In the market for a trip to China's Three Gorges, before the dam makes it one giant liquidation sale.
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Sex? All the talk on Sex and the City misses both what's right and what's wrong with the film.
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Perused Furniture Take furniture out of the context of all restrictive impediments and you've got the International Contemporary Furniture Fair.
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Body Service How Brazilian waxes make our era less like the freewheeling '60s and more like the Victorian years.
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Bag Ladies Class struggles, identity, democratization, and postmodernism. They're all tied up in the shopping bag.
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| Open House The open house: Sunday afternoon voyeurism.
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The End of the Affair I loved reading books. Buying them. Writing them. But in the age of the megastores, the love affair is over.
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Home Bodies A home show is a domestic circus, with homeowners as its Super Mop-buying freaks.
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Buying a Fountain Pen Like the rifle and the sports car, the fountain pen is a fetish.
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Replacing the Volvo Deeply entrenched in a suburban lifestyle, I'm supposed to love my Volvo. But the car is not lovable.
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In the Spirit of Arts and Crafts William Morris championed useful, pretty things. I agree. That's why I bought a wicker chair and chintz cushion.
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Shopping With Henry Jaglom Going Shopping is Henry Jaglom's third film on female neurotic desires. Is he a genius or a jerk?
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A Visit to the Sneaker Gallery Sneakers were once utilitarian objects for high school gym. Now they're art.
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Department Store Elegy Department store culture belied the fact that women had nothing to do but shop. But they were an experience, smoky aisles and all.
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Thrift Shop Buying To some, thrift stores are disgusting. To me, they hint at lives I'll never know.
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The Handbag The handbag is either a symbol of nesting or a tool of enslavement. Either way, buying one's a bitch.
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Souvenirs Leather belt from Rio or fur hat from Russia, the souvenir is not so much a remembrance of things past as a promise of things to come.
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The Impossibility of Gift-Giving Mauss said gift-giving was more about form than content. He must never have been gifted an ugly bracelet.
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Supermarkets Why a supermarket is never quite right.
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| The Last Taboo To praise shopping is to breach the last taboo of academic culture.
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